Firefox (on Desktop) is currently the only major browser with touchscreen/trackpad smooth zooming. Zooming on it feels awful and clunky.
Mozilla appears to have put effort into optimising the browser for touchscreen devices, however, it still lacks this f̶e̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ necessity.
Despite this issue having sat around in Bugzilla for 7 odd years, Mozilla either hasn’t noticed it or doesn’t care. Someone mentioned that it would be worked on “as other priorities permit,” but they offered no roadmap and no further updates. So how are users meant to know it hasn’t been completely forgotten about? And why is this not considered to be a priority?
This is problem prevents many users from switching from Chrome, it is simply expected.
The code already exists on Firefox Android, so I don’t understand why it hasn’t already been implemented.
No matter how well Firefox performs or what killer new features are introduced, people will not use it unless it has the minimum they expect.
The fact that nobody has replied IMHO proves my point.
I do not know, but I’m assuming is has to do with what layout engine is used. I’m also guessing that Firefox for Android is similar to Firefox for iOS.
That is, as Firefox for iOS is like a “skin” that “wraps around” Safari and uses webkit instead of gecko, Firefox for Android uses blink instead of gecko.
On desktop, Chrome uses blink, Firefox uses gecko.
Although I believe most programming languages can do just about anything, I also believe that most often compromises need to be made. For example, if something is done one way, then doing something else might be better, but another might be worse. If done a different way, the reverse. Yet another way, both would be OK but neither would be great.
It will take someone familliar with gecko to provide an authoritative answer, but I’m guessing that improving the feature would require a major rewrite of the engines code, or there would be a negative impact on other aspects and has been deemed undesirable.
Firefox for android uses the same rendering engine as desktop. The scrollbar behaviours are different, but otherwise, it should work fine.
I don’t see why it would be deemed undesirable, nobody has mentioned that they do not want to see it, it is simply that nobody has worked on it, and as far as I can tell, nobody is going to.
I agree this so terribly frustrating. It sometimes feels like nobody seems to get it. Still. That multi-touch on PC is a thing. It works awesome in Chrome. I’m boycotting Chrome though…
It would be nice if this was corrected. Pinch to zoom really oughtta just work.
Still nothing in 2020
No this is only on iOS, on Android devs are free to create their own engine if they want.
The one Firefox uses exists for years and yet doesn’t have real zoom (smooth zoom). It’s 2020. It’s pathetic.